Hemant Mehta aka The Friendly Atheist On The Controversial Freedom From Religion Foundation "FreeThought" Bus Signs Ad In The UU World

Hemant Mehta aka The Friendly Atheist recently addressed the controversy arising from the publication of an ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation seeking donations for its "FreeThought" Bus Sign Campaign on the Unitarian Universalists Complain About Atheist Ads post of his The Friendly Atheist blog. Amongst other things The Friendly And Forthcoming Atheist says -

"The ad placement makes sense — a lot of atheists belong to UU congregations and would be likely donors to FFRF’s ad campaign."

True enough. In fact I have heard that the FFRF's controversial advertisement in the UU World magazine did cause some U*Us to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation and it no doubt also garnered a certain number of donations for the FFRF's "FreeThought" Bus Sign Campaign from Atheist U*Us, whether they were Friendly Atheist U*Us or intolerant and *hostile* Fundamentalist Atheist U*Us. . .

In response to the subsequent back-tracking of UU World business manager Scott Ulrich in which Ulrich responsibly acknowledged that the FFRF ad in question "seems hostile to all religion" and that "it was a mistake to run this particular ad" The Friendly Atheist says -

"That’s a depressing response. The ads are not hostile to religion. They simply showcase famous people who happened to be atheists. They reach out to others who may think the same way, which do happen to be many UU folks. What look to be a few vocal opponents forced the magazine to apologize for a perfectly appropriate ad."

Hemant Mehta's questionable assertion that, "The ads are not hostile to religion" is thankfully countered by several commenters who acknowledge that the "FreeThought" Bus Sign Campaign ads are in fact quite hostile to religion in general, and theistic religions in particular. I recommend reading the full Friendly Atheist blog post and the fairly lengthy comment string that follows it.

Here are the comments that I just successfully submitted to it. The first "off topic" comment is in direct response to the comment by a Unitarian*Universalist aka U*U named Alex that directly preceded it.

To wit -

"Our great Theodore Parker and heretic also got thrown out by the Boston Unitarians for his blasphemy. So it’s nothing new for the UU power structure to censor or excommunicate heretical or blasphemous people or organizations."

My response -

For the record: One Robin Edgar got thrown out by the Montreal Unitarians for his peaceful public protest against the anti-religious intolerance and bigotry that he was subjected to by the far from friendly, indeed the intolerant, insulting, and outright *hostile* and abusive Atheist leaders of the Unitarian Church of Montreal.

You are quite right Alex. It is in fact nothing new for the U*U power structure to censor or excommunicate critics and dissenters who U*Us choose the fate of portraying as heretical or blasphemous people. Outrageously hypocritical Unitarian*Universalists aka U*Us will even go so far as to have such “heretical” people unjustly arrested on trumped up criminal charges in order to try to suppress a peaceful public protest. . .

My second "on topic" follow-up comment -

Getting back to the controversy arising from the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “FreeThought” Bus Sign Campaign ad in the UU World magazine it should be noted that some agnostic Humanist UUs considered the ad to be inappropriate and hostile to ALL religion even non-theistic religion. No doubt the ad that offended these *religious* Humanists was the Butterfly McQueen quote which did not float like a butterfly but did sting like a ‘B’ for boorish. . . It is one thing for a person to speak about freeing themselves from their own personal “slavery” to religion but quite another for someone to assert that ALL religion is “slavery”. Anyone interested in reviewing what Unitarian*Universalist bloggers thought about the FFRF ad in the UU World magazine should follow this link to the UUpdates blog aggregator and browse through the various blog posts and attached comments. It’s probably not *too* late to comment on their blogs yourself if you want to. I had quite a bit of fun parodying the ads on The Wonderful Wizard of U*Us blog (linked from my name) as well as on The Emerson Avenger blog and the Occam’s Zweihander blog.